As in the anteroom – a pilgrim that makes up the awaiting of the main piece

Footy Finals and Two Kinds of Nervous

September is a nervous month for many football fans. On Friday morning, I slept in and so I caught a morning breakfast TV interview the host was having with a popular radio talkback host, Neil Mitchell. Neil is a Melbourne Demons fan and Neil said he was nervous, as his team prepared to play Geelong in the first elimination final.

I was nervous too, the day before. I went straight from work to the G on Thursday night, and copped both the rain and a shellacking. The Hawks played really poorly and went down to the Tigers.

At work on Friday, I was off coloured – tired and deflated. That night however, Tress and I caught up with Jason and Mel and A Hooi and U Marloney for dinner and it was very good to meet them and catch up again, so I felt a whole lot better for it.

On Saturday, I went to St Alf’s for sweeping/yard cleaning duty but there was a wedding on so the cleaning was already done. We then kept an appointment with our tax agents, who delivered some bad news. It is painful to be shown how much tax we both have to pay, and it angered me we’re funding some pretty stupid politicians for their shenanigans, with the amount of taxes we cough up. It hurts even as I write this.

We left the tax agents just after noon, got lunch and did some grocery shopping, and then went home for some gardening. Our garden has been neglected for much of winter and I had wanted to reduce the height of our James Sterling hedges. The afternoon was a touch cloudy and cool so it was very nice to stay outside and just work away.

I kept working when the Swans v Giants game started, listening to the first quarter on the radio. I couldn’t stay away from watching the game for too long however, so towards the end of that quarter, I cleaned up and watched the rest of the game on TV. Giants were very good in killing of the Swans, keeping Franklin goalless for much of the game. Swans only had 8 points to almost the end of the game, before a couple of quick late goals made them look more respectable.

Later that night, the West Coast hosted the Pies and it was, to me, the game of the finals so far. The Eagles got up, but the Pies had led by 2 points with 6 minutes to go. I was glued to the TV, even as Tress had gone to bed in the last quarter.

On Sunday at St Alf’s we listened to a speaker with an unusual name. Frog Orr-Ewing is a clergy from Oxford. He is a contemporary of Bear Grylls and they both grew up in the same faith community and jokes about Frog and Bear were easy picking. He was a very good speaker and I later learned he and his wife Amy have written well received books. I must look out for and keep them in my reading list.

Frog did a bit of an altar call thing towards the end of the service and Ginny too, made some points about going out of our usual day to day boundaries to do stuff for Him. This has been resonating for a little while now but the threshold to overcome and actually do something, feels unbearably high. I don’t know how to start.

Tress and I decided to cook some bak kut teh for this week’s lunches so yesterday arvo was a big cookout as I did the BKT on the pressure cooker, did a big pot of stir dry cabbage on a second pot, and cooked brown rice in the rice cooker. All dishes packed away in the freezer and washing done, we finally settled in to get ready for the start of the working week again.

This morning as I jumped online to get tickets for Hawks’ semi-final against Melbourne this Friday, I wondered about what lies ahead. September can fly past in a blur if your team is involved in the finals and stays a bit.

As Tress and I talked about going home to be with her mum in cup week and I read my cousin Joanne’s FB posts about her late mum (my aunt who died over a week ago), I’m grateful for a blurringly quick passing September but I’m also restless about my inability to cross that threshold to do more for Him, with the increasingly less time I now have. I get nervous for a different reason when that happens. Unlike football, there is no next year/season to provide hope fpr comfort. I should therefore be even more nervous, than footy fans get in September.